Jill Mceldowney

Birds of

“I loved you. I love you. You were.
And you are.”
—Mary Jo Bang Elegy

I think about him when I’m not
even thinking.
                   I touch my face, the side of my throat     the places his hands have been
hold what I should forget      I remember

no canary in the coal mine— no proof but the water
acting weird again, smelling like blood, running at strange hours—
         no one else there

                   when he stayed awake all night to check my pulse,
no one else illuminated                   the cities at the center of me.

Did I dream up—

birds of                warning, birds of no              tomorrow, birds in my gut,
         in my hair, his hands in—     of his     
kiss on every finger, his fingers to           my pulse? It comes back—

like the dead never will

         a between worlds pain           drags me.
I was 20 years old. I was vodka-drunk, out of my mind,

so calm.

He is the wound           without exit
—no voicemail to call,
                            no clothes on my bedroom floor,

no name to speak          all I have left       is a name I won’t speak
because I don’t want to wake

                   the dead, don’t want the dead

                   to think I am moving on forgetting happy
—no photos of us—like we forgot
we were there.

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Jill Mceldowney is the author of the chapbook Airs Above Ground (Finishing Line Press), as well as Kisses Over Babylon (dancing girl press). She is an editor and cofounder of Madhouse Press. She is also a recent National Poetry Series Finalist. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Muzzle, Fugue, Vinyl, the Sonora Review, Prairie Schooner and other notable publications.